Fellow

Christine Dakin was a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company starting in 1976. Named artistic director in 2002, she led the company to its rebirth. She is known for her performances of Graham’s own roles and the principal roles Graham created for her. Theater and dancing roles have also been created for her by Robert Wilson, Twyla Tharp, and Martha Clarke, with whom she continues to collaborate. She is an associate founder of and continues to dance with the Buglisi Dance Theatre.

Dakin is creating a DVD exploring the revolutionary dance technique at the core of Graham’s art, making connections to its roots in, literature, music, natural world, and sculpture. By placing dance at the core of human experience as art form, self-expression, and communal experience and collaborating with American and Mexican artists, she will celebrate Graham’s impact on dance.

Dakin received the Dance Magazine Award and a Bessie (New York Dance and Performance Award). Her teaching, choreography, and research have been supported by a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award, the Rockefeller US-Mexico Fund for Culture, and the United States Information Agency in Russia and South America. CEC ArtsLink awarded her a grant to work with contemporary choreographer Olga Bavdilovich in Vladivostok, Russia. On leave from The Juilliard School and The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, she has taught at the University of Michigan and Harvard University and is a guest artist at Ballet Nacional de México and Universidad de Colima.

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.